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tragedy

Pawns

What if the thoughts in your head aren't actually yours? Picture this: someone's losing their mind trying to save the person they love most. There's a voice on the phone—cold, synthetic, playing games. Riddles with impossible answers. A countdown ticking toward something unthinkable. They're racing through traffic, heart pounding, memories surfacing like shrapnel. Every decision feels urgent. Every emotion feels real. But here's the thing that'll keep you up at night: None of it was supposed to work. The riddles? Designed to have no right answer. The call? Never meant to save anyone. The choices? An illusion wrapped in desperation. And that voice on the other end—the one pulling strings with such cruel precision? They have no idea someone's pulling theirs too. See, while our victim is breaking down, convinced their panic is their own, and while the tormentor is getting off on their power, drunk on control... There's someone else. Sitting in a dark office. Watching both of them on different screens. Smiling at how perfectly the pieces are moving. The victim can't see their strings. The tormentor can't feel the hand moving them. And that's the whole point. This is a story about control so deep it controls the controllers. About how every emotion you think is genuine—love, fear, guilt, even the sick thrill of having power over someone—might just be responses someone programmed into you before you even knew you existed. About the possibility that free will is just a story we tell ourselves while we follow invisible scripts. One person thinks they're fighting for survival. Another thinks they're the puppet master. But both are dancing. And neither of them chose the music. Because real control doesn't look like chains. It looks like freedom. It feels like choice. It sounds like your own voice in your head. Until you realize it was never yours at all.
Anvata_Fableseed · 27k Views

Pawns : Rise Against the Strings

What if the thoughts in your head aren't actually yours? Picture this: someone's losing their mind trying to save the person they love most. There's a voice on the phone—cold, synthetic, playing games. Riddles with impossible answers. A countdown ticking toward something unthinkable. They're racing through traffic, heart pounding, memories surfacing like shrapnel. Every decision feels urgent. Every emotion feels real. But here's the thing that'll keep you up at night: None of it was supposed to work. The riddles? Designed to have no right answer. The call? Never meant to save anyone. The choices? An illusion wrapped in desperation. And that voice on the other end—the one pulling strings with such cruel precision? They have no idea someone's pulling theirs too. See, while our victim is breaking down, convinced their panic is their own, and while the tormentor is getting off on their power, drunk on control... There's someone else. Sitting in a dark office. Watching both of them on different screens. Smiling at how perfectly the pieces are moving. The victim can't see their strings. The tormentor can't feel the hand moving them. And that's the whole point. This is a story about control so deep it controls the controllers. About how every emotion you think is genuine—love, fear, guilt, even the sick thrill of having power over someone—might just be responses someone programmed into you before you even knew you existed. About the possibility that free will is just a story we tell ourselves while we follow invisible scripts. One person thinks they're fighting for survival. Another thinks they're the puppet master. But both are dancing. And neither of them chose the music. Because real control doesn't look like chains. It looks like freedom. It feels like choice. It sounds like your own voice in your head. Until you realize it was never yours at all.
Anvata_Fableseed · 4.6k Views

EGEMED: THE DIVINE PSYCHO

Some people are born with a curse—a curse of seeing too much, feeling too deeply, and sensing truths others overlook. They suffer in silence, terrified of being judged for the very things that make them different. They feel ignored, left out, misunderstood. Their curse does not come from being bad; in fact, they are often the quiet hands that shape the lives of others. Egemed was one of them. His sight—this strange and merciless gift—allowed him to witness things beyond human reach. He felt so intensely that the boundaries of wrong and right blurred before him. More than once he wished to undo this sight, to tear it out of his soul and be normal. But the world had already carved him into something else. For twenty years, he lived in a shadowed silence that felt like hell. No matter how others tried to bring him joy, happiness slipped past him like water through fingers. He longed for something simple yet rare—someone who understood him. Someone who could see him. And for six whole years, he found exactly that. A friend who carried his weight, who listened, who made him believe he could belong in a world that once rejected him. But even that light could not erase the wounds of a lifetime. At twenty-one, Egemed finally broke. He tried to speak of the truths his eyes had shown him—tried to show people the world that lived inside him. But instead of understanding, they scolded him. Mocked him. Called him mad, delusional. The more he revealed, the more they forced him back into silence. ••• “I once met a man who spoke as if every word carried a wound. His eyes were quiet, yet inside them lived storms”
Merlys_V · 13.1k Views